Ted Cruz’s dad rips RINOs, Obamacare

Ted Cruz’s father, Rafael, ripped into the 25 “Republican in name only” senators who broke with his son’s budget brinksmanship, endorsing primary challenges against them, during a speech Friday night in Colorado.

The Republican senator’s dad, who fled Cuba as a teenager and now lives in a Dallas suburb, was caught on tape claiming that the Affordable Care Act “rationed” care for the elderly and includes “suicide counseling.”

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Cruz's dad: Son 'destined' by God

“As a matter of fact, one of the things in Obamacare is that for the elderly, every five years you must have end-of-life counseling,” he told a crowd at a Lincoln-Day dinner just north of Denver. “Translation: suicide counseling.”

ColaradoPols.com, a liberal blog, posted a two-minute audio clip forwarded by a source in the room and then agreed to share a longer excerpt with POLITICO Monday night.

Cruz received loud cheers as he talked about his son’s 21-hour speech.

“What is sad is the RINOs who went running to vote with Harry Reid,” he said. “I know I am in a Republican Party meeting. If you want to throw tomatoes at me, throw tomatoes at me, but unfortunately, you cannot say that the Republican Party is without blame. We have too many RINOs in the Republican Party.”

“And unfortunately some of those RINOs that have been there for 30 years want to be there for another thirty,” he added. “They have no clue of what’s happening in the country. As a matter of fact, most of them refused to have town hall meetings because they didn’t want to face we the people. They have their minds made up, and basically their idea is this: ‘you’re too stupid and I know what I’m doing.’

“Well, I’ll tell you what, we the people are not stupid. We the people ought to be smart enough to vote them right out of office, or primary them, and put constitutional conservatives in their place.”

Sent the quotes, a Cruz spokeswoman stressed that this was “Mr. Cruz’s speech” and that “Senator Cruz has been in D.C. fully focused on the effort to defund Obamacare.”

The elder Cruz, 74, has stepped up his profile in recent months as his son’s star has risen and 2016 chatter increased. He and the freshman both spoke in Iowa this August at a Family Leader event. He accompanied the Heritage Foundation’s Jim DeMint for part of a nine-city summer tour focused on defunding the Affordable Health Care Act. He’s won praise from tea party groups and talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh.

He leans heavily on his Cuban heritage, even comparing Obama to Fidel Castro.

“I believe the most ominous words I’ve ever heard from Barack Hussein Obama was two years in a row at the State of the Union address when he said, ‘If Congress does not act, I will act unilaterally,’” said Cruz. “[It’s] no different than that bearded friend, or dictator, that I left back in Cuba.”

The ColoradoPols blog, which has been operational since 2004, reported that GOP Senate candidates Ken Buck and Randy Baumgardner were in the room.

Cruz, who has a ministry in Texas, warned that the Founding Fathers’ religious convictions are being intentionally ignored by the education system. He said there were church services every Sunday in the Capitol during the early years of the republic, and that Thomas Jefferson attended them while vice president and president.

“That is our history that has been erased from the public schools,” he said.

Cruz called the idea that there should be a separation of church and state “idiotic.”

“It’s a one-way wall, to keep government from instituting a government-established religion,” he said.

Cruz asserted that “three of four evangelical Christians sat home in the last election,” which he chalked up as a cause for the poor Republican performance in 2012.

“We’re talking about somewhere from 45 million to 60 million people that stayed home,” he said. “We got what we deserved.”

“If we don’t retake the Senate in 2014, it may be too late,” he added. “We don’t have much time. We can’t wait until 2016.”